Tabloid media in the West target the lumpen proletariat as enemies of the State. They are the lowest stratum of the class dependent on benefits. It includes such undesirables as tramps, criminals, social deviants and welfare scroungers.

Karl Marx was very antagonistic towards the lumpens in The Communist Manifesto. He called them “social scum” who were unlikely to participate in revolutionary activities with their “rightful brethren,” the proletariat.

Since then many political thinkers see the lumpens as the true rebels in a bourgeois society. The dominant class struggle isn’t between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat but between the lumpen proletariat and all other classes who have been bourgeoisified.

Theorists see the lumpens as an anarchic force, made up of the most desperate and alienated sub-groups in society. The delinquents and deviants refuse to knuckle under and accept work, debt and accumulation. They are the real threat to bourgeois stability.